A court in Voronezh convicted ten Jehovah’s Witnesses. Eight were sentenced to prison terms
The judge of the Levoberezhny District Court of Voronezh, Yevgeniya Laskavaya, sentenced Yevgeny Sokolov to seven years in a general-regime penal colony; Aleksei Antyukhin, Yury Galka, Valery Gursky, Vitaly Nerush, Stepan Pankratov, Mikhail Veselov, and Anatoly Yagupov to six years in a penal colony; and Sergei Bayev and Igor Popov received six-year suspended sentences. This information is reported by the website ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses. Legal Situation in Russia’.
According to the prosecution, they “made a criminal decision to carry out deliberate organizational actions aimed at resuming and continuing the activities” of the Jehovah’s Witnesses cell in Voronezh.
The case was heard in court from December 2021.
All the believers were found guilty under the article on organizing extremist activity (Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Russian Criminal Code). They did not plead guilty. After the verdict was announced, Antyukhin, Galka, Gursky, Nerush, Pankratov, Veselov, and Yagupov were taken into custody.
You can support the believers by sending letters to:
394030, Voronezh, Zhelyabova St., 56, Pretrial Detention Center No. 1, Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in Voronezh Oblast
- Vitaly Alekseevich Nerush, born 1979
- Stepan Viktorovich Pankratov, born 1995
- Aleksey Stanislavovich Antyukhin, born 1976
- Yury Yuryevich Galka, born 1975
- Valery Ivanovich Gursky, born 1963
- Mikhail Nikolaevich Veselov, born 1968
- Anatoly Gennadyevich Yagupov, born 1968
We consider these imprisoned Jehovah’s Witnesses to be political prisoners.
